sat to one side of him. He pulled out a layout pad,
opened his pastels and arranged them deliberately beside it. I wondered
how he could show me his love-troubles this way, unless it was by
diagrams.

"Nothing happens," he said, waving a pastel stick under my nose, "until
I've used the three basic colors and signed the illo. If there isn't a
balance of the three basics it's no good. That's why I arranged the
pastels that way."

He naturally assumed I knew what he was talking about. It meant nothing
more to me than a freak technique he'd developed. That signature
business sounded--neurotic.

* * * * *

Now this part of my story is important. Until he finished that sketch I
was the normal, practical guy I was telling you about. Nothing fizzed on
me unless it added up to four and I could feel the two and two of it. A
buck was a buck, a girl was a girl--

His grey pastel flew over the paper and as usual I marvelled at how
these guys could do it. Like the saying goes, all I can draw is flies
and rubber checks, and frequently a blank. I've seen a lot of artists do
their stuff, but none of them come up to Willy. You've seen his illos in
most of the big slicks--you know, the guy and gal in all angles on the
yellow beach under a pink sky, and the story title reads "When Will You
Come Back, Dearest?", or the cola series on the back cover where the
girl swigs and the guy gawks at her bathing suit, that sort of stuff.
The fat accounts, they all came running for Willy. With him on the
payroll the agency could have made a fortune.

I was considering ways to broach this subject so it would tie in with
the poor guy's dilemma when he started working the third color into the
sketch. Naturally it was a dame; he could draw them with his eyes shut.
The third color went into the bathing suit. He smudged chalk on his
finger and touched the sketch with quick strokes, moulding the form, and
what a form. I leaned forward, and half stood over his chair, marvelling
at the way he did it. Then, applying a dough rubber to pick out
highlights and stray smudges, he leaned back and reached for a pencil.
Noticing how tensed he was, I sank back into my chair and lit a
cigarette.

"There," he whispered, his hand poised with the pencil at the bottom
left-hand corner.

"So now what gives?" I asked. "Is she the--"

"So now I sign it." He looked around at me, spaniel-eyed. I gathered
that he was reluctant to sign it.